Saturday, 26 May 2018

Can’t Buy You Love… The Magic Christian (1969)

Released just at the last gasp of the Sixties, this
adaptation of Terry Southern’s 1959 novel fares a little better than the
earlier adaptation of Candy (written
in 1958 and filmed in 1968). If Candy
was broadly about sex (and respect) then The
Magic Christian is all about money and the idea that every man has his
price.

Produced by Denis O’Dell (who gets name-checked as Denis
O’Bell in eccentric Beatles B-side “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)”) and
directed by Joseph McGrath, the film stars Ringo Starr and features Come and Get It as a theme tune written
by old mucker Paul McCartney, performed by protégés Badfinger. As that tune
plays over the opening credits you feel that perhaps the film will be better
than you remember but, in truth, whilst it is, a little, overall, it’s not
quite the sum of it’s talented parts. As with Candy and others of the period, it’s almost as if making the
political/philosophical point, is all that really matters and so it is repeated
without ever being progressed with no solution offered.

Ringo and Peter

What’s the thing that money can’t buy, Beatles fans…? The
answer was given in 1964. But with this film, in 1969, it was Money (That’s What I Want) this time without the irony.

But I’m being too hard because this film has dozens of
period faces, a couple of Pythons, Harry Carpenter commentating. Laurence Harvey
stripping along to Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, Yul Brynner as a
surprisingly convincing cross-dressed cabaret singer, Christopher Lee, Richard
Attenborough and Raquel Welch in leather bikini and a whip. The narrative may
lack purpose, but you can’t say it’s without incident!

Peter Sellers, getting down with the kids, plays Sir Guy
Grand KG, KC, CBE a man with money and sense who decides to adopt a down and
out, Youngman (Ringo Starr) after finding him sleeping rough. To the
consternation of his advisors, he had Youngman declared as his son and
inheritor and proceeds to show him how the World works. Youngman keeps on
calling him “Dad” and it’s all very arch.

Isabel Jeans, Peter Sellars and Caroline Blakiston

Youngman joins his new Dad at the theatre along with
other members of his new family, Dame Agnes Grand (played by Isabel Jeans who
had begun acting in the silent era) and the Hon. Esther Grand (Caroline
Blakiston). They’re astonished watching Laurence Harvey as mid-soliloquy he
starts to strip… the first of many jokes enabled by Grand’s wallet. Fair to
play to Lauro though it is funny!

Next a grocer’s shop full of classic sixties brand names
all of which are sold off at ridiculous prices… “Ha-ha Mr Wilson, Ha-ha, Mr
Heath…” Then we’re in a boardroom on a train where Guy introduces his new son
and a new concept car, The Zeus which is a gigantic wealth-expressing car that
will crush all others. The promotional film is very like a Terry Gilliam spoof
mixed with Yellow Submarine.

The pace is relentless as others on the train – Hattie
Jacques and a businessman – are pranked and a hot dog vendor (Victor Maddern)
is left holding far too much change as the train pulls away – one of Grand’s
favourite tricks in the book. At least the vendor was trying to give the
billionaire his money back!

Onto a hunting party using tanks and big guns rather than
shotguns and why not? There’s a parade of soldiers and a banner declaring it’s
Grand to be Grand as the inedible hunted by the distasteful is presented by the
finest chefs.

Back to Westminster and meeting the servants at Grand’s
pied a Terre then, as the family reads and plays the cello, there’s actual news
footage showing marches and distress across the world none of it impinging on
the Grand living room; or does it?

John Le Mesurier , Ringo Starr and Peter Sellars at the Boat Race

They watch as a wrestling bout turns into a love match –
all courtesy of Grand’s grands – and then go out for expensive Kellogg’s’ Corn
Flakes as Guy makes like Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s later Meaning of Life
(or indeed, the earlier mountain of beans feast in Magical Mystery Tour) and
has an entire restaurant humiliate itself.

The film climaxes with the sailing of the Magic Christian
cruise ship which features a wealthy clientele terrorised by Christopher Lee as
the ship’s vampire, Raquel Welch in sadistic charge of the engine room – dozens
of naked women rowing – homo-erotic cabaret disturbing some of the
straight-laced audience (chiefly Terrance Alexander), Yul chatting up Roman
Polanski in his blonde wig and Wilfred Hyde White as the sloshed skipper. All
descends into anarchy… before the secret is revealed.

Raquel Welch

Then, a last coda with hundreds of city workers diving
into a vat of steaming sewage on the Southbank in order to fish out the money
thrown in by Sir Guy… Thunderclap Newman’s "Something
in the Air" plays as his point is proven despite the smell. It feels
like a pop video and it feels heavy-handed but nowadays we have found new
depths to plumb and maybe we take it too much for granted.

The film falters partly because of this dissonance but
also because it is perpetually cynical, as Candy was, although the central
character there was innocent. Here it feels more like Sir Guy and Youngman are
just being cruel and we could have done with at least one person to stand up
and say no thanks or one scenario that doesn’t rely on the assumption that all
of us are in it for the money.

Dusty verdict:
Worth watching for the style and the music as well as spotting a host of
character actors and the pre-Pythons. Don’t expect to be uplifted or even
converted… now, more than ever, we’re greedy bastards.

There are some genuinely funny parts – strip Hamlet and Spike’s parking ticket
munching – and it does work when there are targets in genuine need of being
taken down. Another imperfect psychedelic production; perhaps too over-ground
to hang onto it’s arguments… undermined by the money men, man.

Peter Sellars and Spike Milligan

The Magic Christian
is available on DVD and even Blu-ray – perfect for the Raquel fans who want to
see the all-female slave scene in clearer detail. Slavery as sexual
exploitation is surely not cool.